No kidding, there I was, checking my email, when I saw it:
[RESPONSE REQUIRED] You’ve been selected as a speaker for WordCamp Maine!
It’s more or less my professional goal to infiltrate the inner circles of the WordPress community, so this came as good news. Even better, I already had my topic prepared because I’d written it as an ALA article some years ago. The one problem? Slides. I had none, and if I tried to make one I’d need a pro license for MS-Paint. That’s when I decided to hit the easy button.
Brian Made My Slides
I literally made a jira ticket for Brian to make my slides and he did just that. They were phenomenal and you can download them here.
That’ll do, no? I had the first presentation after the morning break, but put my cover slide on the projector as soon as the break began. I think the awesome design helped fill a few extra seats.
The Talk Went Pretty Well
A 40-minute stage appearance is a really long thing to commit to rehearsing on a given evening. Do I shower today, or rehearse my talk? I showered less than average over the month prior to my talk, but still should have rehearsed a bit more. I stumbled a couple of times. But, it seemed like people were engaged. I was having to pause for laughter at the occasional dev joke and I can’t really ask for more than that.
Yeah Speaking at WordCamp is Fun but Have You Ate Pizza with Matt?
In an amazing coincidence, Matt Mullenweg happened to be visiting Portland that same weekend. He held a meet and great at a small workspace where several Automatticians work and I finally got to meet one of my heroes. I was a little star struck! He honestly was so cool. So friendly, so engaging, so intelligent, so inspiring. He spoke for about 45 minutes, and then took questions for about that long. One person asked him several very specific questions about how to use the media library, and he was incredibly graceful about it. Not even a chuckle or an eyeroll, just passion and interest about some of the features that came straight from “Photo Matt”.
He spoke about Gutenberg a bit. He seems happy and he seems unflappable despite the mounting uncertainty in the community. I think it’s called perspective. He compared it the uncertainty that came about when WordPress first adoped TinyMCE. Wow. Yeah, that’s perspective. He also said that it can be challenging to discern between valid criticism and criticism of change for its own sake.
Anyways that’s a wrap for this donut. I’ll be sure to share the video of my talk if it makes it onto WordCamp.tv!